Creepy Robot Telemarketer Insists She's a 'Real Person' (LISTEN)

I almost feel like I’m trapped in a Stanley Kubrick film when I hear things like this audio of a robot telemarketer insisting that she’s human. “Samantha West” as she came to be known, dialed TIME Washington Bureau Chief Michael Scherer’s cell phone and started asking him questions about his health care coverage.

Bothered by the pitch-perfect responses, he asked her pointblank, “Are you a robot?”

Things got weird as Samantha laughed and insisted that she was indeed a real person, but refused to respond to the request to repeat back, “I am not a robot.” She even blamed a bad connection when he said she sounded like a robot!

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Of course, a bunch of reporters at TIME jumped on this and called Samantha up directly to test the validity of her claims of humanity. Apparently, she couldn’t answer basic questions like “What vegetable is found in tomato soup?” Or "What day of the week was it yesterday?"

Definitely a robot.

It is totally creepy how advanced technology is getting, but it makes me happy that people can still outsmart the machines. Just so long as we don’t scorch the sky, I think we’ll be just fine.